


Soul-Flowers

by Onmyliteraturebullshitagain



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Feels, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Canon Universe, Canon-adjacent, Emotions, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Romance, Follows the structure of the original, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Happy Ending, Internalized Homophobia, It always ends with fluff with me, Light Angst, M/M, Rating only for some heavy topics, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Teen Romance, Zukka soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29514003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onmyliteraturebullshitagain/pseuds/Onmyliteraturebullshitagain
Summary: Scars on one person appear as flowers on their soulmate's skin. But sometimes soulmates aren't who you expect, and sometimes scars aren't so easy to hide, and sometimes someone you thought was your enemy turns out to be exactly who you needed.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 187
Kudos: 551





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to mists_of_avalon for the prompt list from which I took this inspiration, and to hereforthefic_onlythefic for feedback and revision ideas. This story is an absolutely new adventure for me, and this would not exist without you! :)
> 
> There is now also BEAUTIFUL art of Sokka from this story by anxietyriddenzuko on tumblr: [Sokka from Soul-Flowers](https://onmyliteraturebullshitagain.tumblr.com/post/643418432029786112)
> 
> So this is another experiment for me in turns of content and style (apparently that's what I'm gonna use fanfic and Zukka for recently) since it's writing alongside canon AND writing the characters as teens AND approaching a soulmate AU. Hopefully you enjoy!

Sokka didn't expect to ever get a soul-flower on his face. He'd gotten used to the little ones all through his childhood, at least once his parents explained what they were, what they meant. 

"You have a soulmate," his mom had said when he showed her the little reddish flower that had blossomed on one of his knuckles, the first ever, "and any time that person gets a scar on their body, a flower will grow in that same place on you."

"So she's _hurt_?" a six-year-old Sokka had said, aghast at the implication and staring down at the flower as if it was somehow to blame. 

"Only a little," his mom said kindly, "but it's healed, scarred now. So she's not hurt anymore. And look at yourself, my love." She picked up his other hand, hers scattered softly with flowers of her own, and turned it over to show him the little scar on the side of his pointer finger from an incident with a kitchen knife and Sokka as an overenthusiastic helper. She tapped that little scar. "So she'll have the same sort of little flower right here on her own hand."

Sokka looked between the faded pink scar and the reddish pink flower on his other hand. 

"Do the colors match?" he asked, trying to see if they did on his own skin. "Will the flowers always look like this?"

"Little ones like these," his mom explained and then opened her own hands to demonstrate, "blurry and soft and simple, all different sorts of colors and shapes? They're from accidents, little mishaps, scars with no real importance." She pointed out some on herself, matches to Sokka's dad. "But the larger, more intense, or more emotionally painful the injury, the more detailed and vivid the flower. The closer it will match the scar in shape and color." She held his hand again. "But hopefully you'll never know what that looks like."

Sokka looked again at this first one, a fuzzy little blossom just sitting there like it had been painted on his skin. He rubbed a finger over it, some part of him expecting it to smear away.

"So she's... ok," he said, raising his hand to meet his mom's eyes again. "It's little."

And his mom smiled and nodded and kissed his forehead and sent him back out to play again.

As he aged, there were more small, nondescript ones peppered over his body--on a knee, an ankle, the side of a wrist, the tip of a finger. More than most kids his age.

"She's accident prone," one of the other kids said, one without a single flower on him yet.

"She's unlucky," whispered another and made a gesture meant to protect from spirits.

"She's as stupid as Sokka," said another, his smile wide and mean.

Then Sokka had punched that kid in the face and given his own soulmate a new flower where he'd split his knuckle doing it. 

"Maybe she's a warrior," his dad had said as he bandaged Sokka's hand and chided him for fighting. 

"Girl's can't be _warriors_ ," an eleven-year-old Sokka had scoffed and wondered what his own scars looked like on her skin. Were they small and soft? Were they different colors?

Did she think about him too?

He saw it around the village sometimes, the soulmates, those same little scattering of blossoms, an uneven pattern of a simple life lived. Like his parents had been. Before the Fire Nation raid. Before his mom died. Before his dad's flowers lost their color.

The one on his face was different when it appeared, unfurling around his left eye and spreading backwards over his cheek and his temple and to his ear. It was brilliant in color, shading sweeps of red and pink, and the petals looked real enough to touch. Almost more real than the flowers that actually bloomed in the springtime farthest away from the ocean when the ice cracked and melted enough to let growth through. He stared at it in the mirror, sharp edged and creased with veins and shadows as it spilled across his features, alive like it was caught in a wind and lit by sunlight. It was large and beautiful and horrible all at once.

There were whispers then. By now, every older member of the tribe knew an intentionally inflicted burn scar when they saw one. The Fire Nation had seen to that. 

And it was on Sokka. Forever.

Sokka took to wearing his tribe's ceremonial war paint more often than was strictly necessary, glad for a chance to escape the lingering glances and low-dropped voices that followed him around the village. Even kids by now knew a burn, knew what the Fire Nation was, knew how they punished those who resisted. The Fire Nation was why he'd lost his mom, why his dad was gone, why Sokka was a warrior at all and donning the wolf paint and armor. At least both now helped to cover his flowered skin.

His soulmate was hurt for real now, by their enemy. And she wasn't from the village--any village in the South Pole, because the Fire Nation hadn't come here again in Sokka's lifetime. She was somewhere far away, burned and scarred, and Sokka couldn't do a single thing but protect his tiny home, be their last defender, and wear that awful flower upon his face like a stain he couldn't scrub away. 

More proof of what the Fire Nation did, what it took away, what it always took away. 

Then there was his sister and a boy in an iceberg, and the Avatar was real, and everything changed all at once. Because suddenly the Fire Nation was here, with it's horrible metal ships, its faceless armor, it's too-easy ability to destroy. And there was only Sokka left, only Sokka there to wrap his hands and paint his face and equip his weapons as best he could. One man against an army, but he would have to try. 

The man in front as the soldiers came off the ship didn't wear the face plate, but it didn't make it any easier to make out his features, just the glint of white teeth and gold eyes. He was quick and agile and tossed Sokka to the snow, but Sokka had another trick, a last defense. He rolled back to put himself between the Fire Nation and his all-too-fragile home, and his boomerang flew true in its arch across the sky. He waited, watched for the glint of its return with his breath caught in his throat, the man still staring down at him like a bit of persistent dirt stuck on his shoe.

Boomerang always came back, and it stuck that stupid Fire Nation soldier in the back of the head, dislodging his helmet, making him stumble, making Sokka smile.

The smile fled when the man--not a man, a teen, a boy like Sokka--straightened and glared. Sokka knew the mark of pain upon his face without hesitation, without second thought, like blinking awake from a dream. 

Scars and soul-flowers really could share color and shape if the scar was bad enough, deep enough, terrible enough to make Sokka sure he was living some sort of waking nightmare. Red and pink and raw. At least the flower didn't pull Sokka's eye into a glare, his face into a scowl. But it was there all the same, a match, an image he knew as well as the shape of his own hands.

The spirits had gotten something wrong somewhere along the way. 

His soulmate couldn't be a _boy_ , and more importantly, his soulmate couldn't possibly be _Fire Nation_. A soldier, a prince, a destroyer, a firebender. 

The spirits had made a mistake, and Sokka didn't know how to fix it. 

But he knew how to fight, and he knew how to ignore the fear inside his gut, and he knew how to keep moving forward.

They saved the Avatar. They were on a creature that had been extinct for a hundred years. They were flying. They were leaving the South Pole. Everything they’d ever known, growing smaller and smaller and further away. They were somehow, apparently, going to help save the world. 

Sokka continued putting on his war paint, and both sister and Avatar had the decency not to question him. 

*

His soulmate was clumsy, apparently, because no one else in the royal court was as covered in the stupid little nothing flowers as Zuko was. Just another source of shame, that whoever she was, she clearly wasn't royal, wasn't noble, wasn't elegant, wasn't beautiful. 

"You don't know that," his mother said, stroking her fingertip over the soul-flowers on the side of Zuko's finger. "Maybe she's just as persistent and stubborn and hardworking as you, little turtleduck."

Zuko scoffed at that, although he was aware of his own scars that he'd inflicted upon her as flowers too. So maybe they were even. Maybe, unlike Azula and her perfect lack of flowers and her incredible lack of flaws, Zuko and his soulmate could be equals, could be alike in their messiness, could actually want to be together.

He wasn't stupid enough to have missed that the scars and flowers on his parents didn't match. 

He wondered where she was, what she was doing, what she'd think of him. His mother said Agni created soulmates, made them to be matched sets and to love each other completely, and Zuko had clung to that idea, even if his mom's face got sad when she explained. He still held on to the thought that somewhere out there, beyond the cold nobility and silent passages, outside the palace chambers and its outer walls, there was someone who would want him for himself.

Then there was the Agni Kai and the banishment, the end of what his life had always been. There was the smell of burning and a new and unending sort of pain. There was a new purpose and a new world and a new self. Yet the first time he'd seen the scar in the mirror, all he'd thought about was her, that girl somewhere who matched him. That his disrespect and cowardice had marked her too, ruined her too. His own humiliation carved on her face right along with his, brilliant and unmistakable.

She'd never want him now, soulmate or not.

So he gave her up along with everything else, all those other shards of his old life he couldn't have and didn't need anymore. He focused only on the new one, on what he had to do. 

The years of nothing were far too long, empty and cold and isolated with just his uncle and just this crew. Men who couldn't understand him, who couldn't know him. He was a prince, even a pathetic banished one. He was a warrior, even one less skilled than his sister. He had a purpose, a drive, a need. They couldn't understand that, the burden he carried under his skin and in his bones.

Plenty of them were covered in soul-flowers, unlike the people in the royal court. They were paired with soulmates with similarly rough lives and worn hands: the captain with the blue flowers all across one leg, the first mate and the purple flower on the side of his neck, the soldier with the right hand that seemed more flowers than skin. Most were the simple, little flowers, some more bright, more vivid, more detailed. Zuko hadn't looked at his own in a long time, hadn't kept up with which new ones blossomed and where. They didn't mean anything anymore, anything but a reminder of another thing he's lost.

Uncle's flowers were all grey now, more like echoes than living blossoms, but that, he said, was what memory was like too. What it was to love and lose your soulmate while you continued on alone.

So at least wherever she was, Zuko's soulmate who wouldn't want him, she was still alive.

He supposed that was something. 

What was strangest, though, was the moment he realized the ragged sword scar on the quartermaster's forearm matched the swirl of flowers on a lower level sailor. He had to be mistaken, but he watched them, looked for marks, for blossoms, and kept finding more. Similarities, a scattering of marks, a… matched pair. The first Zuko could remember seeing. Certainly no one in the court was paired with their soulmate, not that he’d ever been able to tell. He didn’t know why that was and had never thought to ask.

But this, those matched scars and soul-flowers, the occasional lingering glance, the brush of hands in passing, as if it was as natural as two sides of a magnet always seeking each other out, it was something else. He watched the pair of soulmates with something strange and afraid in his stomach, the way the quartermaster brushed the hair so gently back from the sailor's face and smiled. Like in that moment, no one else in the world existed but the two of them.

"But they're…" he'd dared to ask his uncle later, in the privacy of night and his separate room, his voice still pitched low, "both _men_."

Uncle's smile was gentle as he nodded.

"The spirits have never cared much for what bodies the twin souls inhabit," he explained, like that meant anything, like that was an explanation at all.

"But it's--it's--" Zuko stammered, " _wrong_ . Weird." He dropped his voice even lower. " _Illegal_."

Uncle was always so calm, lazy and happy and unconcerned, with none of Zuko's temper. It irked him again now, his uncle's mellow head-shake, his disregard. 

"The Fire Nation can no more make love and soulmates illegal than they can turn off the sun in the sky," Uncle replied. "Your grandfather may have tried, and your father may continue it, but all it’s done is create shame for something that should be beautiful."

Zuko stared at him, unsure what portions of this discussion disturbed him more: that two men could be soulmates or that Uncle was saying something the Fire Nation did was _wrong_. None of it made sense. None of it made his life what it had been before. None of it helped him find the Avatar. 

He scoffed and grumbled about stupid stories and shook his head and stormed away.

Still, when he stood out that night under the moon while most of the crew was asleep, he prodded at those feelings in his belly and wondered if maybe his soulmate was a man too.

*

Sokka's soulmate chased them all over the world, with his fire and his soldiers and his stupid ponytail. With his yelling and his punching fists and his calling them "peasants" and his fixation on the Avatar. Sokka kept applying war paint and kept fighting. He dealt with benders and flames more than he'd ever thought possible, fended off swords and arrows and clubs with all the bravery he could muster. He threw his boomerang more times than he could count at the man his heart was supposed to be bonded with, supposed to circle forever in a pair like Tui and La. 

It was a sick joke. 

Days from the North Pole and after the most recent run-in with their awful, persistent fire prince, Katara sat beside Sokka near a lakeside as he washed off his war paint for the night. It had smeared already, going blurry at the edges. The red on his face flared to life in his reflection, and he looked away, pulled back, turned his face to the sky. 

"It's him, isn't it?" Katara asked quietly. "Zuko?"

They both knew what she meant without saying it, and Sokka rubbed at where he knew the flower swept across his cheek. 

"Yeah," he answered quietly. "It is."

He knew it liked a twist in his gut, even beyond the matching soul-flower to the mark on the other boy's face. It was like how storm clouds pulled together to create thunder, unable to keep apart, something recognizable there that yanked one toward the other. He knew it in the way he hated him but watched him too, wanted to find him with his eyes. The spirits and their terrible soulmate choices kept forcing the two together. He even wondered sometimes if that accidental pull was what kept putting Aang in danger, kept making it so the Fire Nation could find them. If the all too frequent pain and fear was actually his fault.

"Do you hate me?" he asked, because he needed to know. 

Katara's answer was quick and sure. "No! Never! You can't help who your soulmate is!"

Just hearing the word, the truth repeated, hurt worse, somehow, and he covered his face. 

"Except mine--" he couldn't say the word, "is a _bad guy_ . You find out yours is the literal _Avatar_ , and mine is the giant jerk constantly trying to kill us. So what's that say about _me_?"

"Nothing," Katara said immediately, always so very confident and sure, her face so set and knowing. 

Having an Avatar for a soulmate would probably do that, Sokka supposed with something he didn't want to recognize as bitterness.

Aang and Katara had figured it out not too long ago themselves, when Aang accidentally burned Katara's hands. Flowers sprung up over his own palms, and then disappeared when Katara learned to heal. Quick and pure, their connection, their knowledge, their link, each other's soulmate, even faster to flourish than regular scars and soul-flowers. And here was Sokka's soulmate, wanting them all dead. 

The North Pole made it hurt worse, because here was a beautiful girl who liked him, unmarked except for a single, perfectly circular flower right at the base of her throat. He'd never seen anything like it, and apparently neither had anyone else. Sokka painted his face and fell in love with her and only learned later that the spirits had marked her that way because she had to match her soulmate too, just like the rest of them. Only her soulmate was a spirit, and she was meant to become one herself. Her dance of Tui and La was literal. She was beautiful and brave and disappeared from his arms, returned to the sky where she belonged. Bringing back the push and pull of the moon and the sea. 

Someone had carved a hole right through Sokka's middle, and yet there was no scar or flower to show for it. Somehow that made the ache even worse.

They did not see Zuko then for a long time, and Sokka couldn't keep himself from wondering why. Of course, it was _good_ , that they weren't being hunted, being chased. But… there'd been something to their own push and pull, he and Zuko, a comfort in the familiarity, in knowing that face as well as he knew his own. 

Sokka hated him, but at least he sort of understood him. Yet even that acquiescence felt a little like betrayal.

Then they were being chased again, by new and different Fire Nation royalty, a whole new surge of threats.

At least none of them had scars that matched Sokka, but he continued to hide his face just the same.

*

Ba Sing Se was a prison, but at least Zuko was no one here. Better to be no one than to be unwanted, to be reminded forever that his father had given up on him completely. Better a metaphorical prisoner in a foreign city than a real one in his own home. 

Uncle was rubbing off on him, but maybe that was ok. Maybe that was how it had to be. 

His hair grew and the new clothes chafed his skin, but he followed Uncle and worked. He served tea and he ignored rudeness and he didn't scream at anyone like he basically always wanted to. He stayed quiet. He breathed. He watched.

Specifically, he watched more and more matched sets, soulmates who had found each other. They came into the tea shop, walked down the street hand in hand, kissed in half-shadowed doorways. They were happy, it seemed. But there were plenty of couples with no matching soul-flowers who seemed happy too. Some with no marking at all, some with those gone grey like Uncle's, some nearly covered with a lover nearly bare. It was those, strangely, the mismatched but in love, that gave him a strange kind of hope again. Little and festering but there.

He'd accepted long ago that his soulmate wouldn't want him, but maybe that was alright. Maybe… just maybe there was someone else who'd choose him anyway, regardless of what the spirits had assigned. 

He went on a date with a girl with no flower on her face, her skin soft and perfect and empty. Agni hadn't destined them. They were not a pair. There was nothing about them that was meant to be.

She'd kissed him anyway.

He'd run away, of course, but it was still something. It was a chance, an option, a gesture in the dark. 

Then the bison and the dragon dream, his sister and the crystal cave. A different kind of chance, the past being offered up again, his old self dangled on a line. He had to try. Didn’t he? It was finally there, within reach, all those things he’d fought so long for. So he took it, hands blazing, with all the stored up fury that had been resting there inside him, waiting for the opportunity to burn. 

There was fire and rage again, and it was consuming, exhilarating, awful. But they won, and that was what mattered.

That had to be what mattered.

He tried to ignore his Uncle's face as it turned away, refusing to look at him. 

Someone else he'd disappointed. A never-ending scale of who could love him and who could not. 

But he was going home, being taken back. He was in the palace. He was with Azula again. He was a prince. He'd defeated the Avatar and regained his honor. It was a lie of course, a constant fear in the corners of his mind, but at least he was back within these well-known halls, within his old self. He swept the hair back from his face once more, donned red like he was meant to. He knelt before his father and raised his head even with the mark blazoned upon him. Maybe he had managed to outgrow its shame. He kissed a girl who didn't match him and he didn't run away this time. 

It was good and right. This was how it was supposed to be.

He tried to make himself stop looking for a soul-flower on the face of a man and told himself that he was happy now. Finally. After everything. He had what he had always wanted.

He never had been a very good liar.


	2. Chapter 2

Sokka had failed and they'd had to flee, his war paint smeared down his cheek so that flashes of red cut between the grey and blue. 

Just that alone felt like treachery. 

But they were safe now, in an ancient, forgotten temple, and the people around him already knew about the mark upon his face. Katara and Aang had been good enough not to say anything about the truth of it, and Toph couldn't see it to make note at all. The others--Haru, Teo, the Duke--they wouldn't know what it meant anyway, and besides, they were off exploring so the other four of them were alone. 

Without his father. Without the little army  _ Sokka  _ had gathered and been meant to lead. Alone and quiet and far, far away.

It all still felt unreal, and Sokka leaned his back against Appa's side and tried to feel less heavy. He used a cloth to wipe away the last of the smeared and mottled paint, too tired to reapply it and unsure why it mattered anyway. Zuko was gone apparently. Alive, based on the vibrancy of the flowers still spilled across his arms and hands (they'd only truly panicked for Aang when Katara's flowers had briefly turned grey), but what did it matter? He sighed and rested his head against his knees, ready to take just a moment of peace.

But the universe sure did like to prove him wrong. 

Zuko, with shaggy hair and no armor, appeared before them like a phantom, for the first time with bare skin enough to show the flowers sprouting on his hands and forearms, the ones that matched the nicks and cuts and burns that made a tapestry of Sokka’s life. 

"Hello. Zuko here," their too-often pursuer and Sokka's soulmate began while the rest of them lined up, prepared for a fight, "I--"

But then he stopped and took at Sokka's face. Uncovered for the first time, the sweeping, too-red flower across the left side, following the same angles of a burn across his cheekbone, brow bone, temple, ear. Zuko reached up and touched his own scar, face still frozen and bewildered and completely unaware of anything else around them. Ignoring the Avatar completely.

"You…" Zuko began, lips parted, and Sokka felt that pull again. 

"Ok bye!" he shouted and ran.

They had an earth bender, water bender, and the actual  _ Avatar _ . If Zuko continued his tradition of evil, they could handle him. Sokka, though, could not. So he kept running, distantly aware of the sound of feet behind him, similarly slapping and echoing against the floor. He kept going, throwing himself up a flight of stairs and into an open yard, just grey stone touched through with moss and sunlight. The feet were following him up, so finally, he simply drew Space Sword and turned to face his pursuer.

His nemesis. His soulmate. 

Zuko had slowed by the time he got to the top of the stairs, but he kept approaching, his hands raised in surrender. Considering "surrender" didn't even seem to be a word the Fire Nation  _ knew _ , Sokka kept his sword raised. It was a trick, another tactic, another trap. Zuko continued to approach. 

He's left Aang down below, though, and that didn't make any sense at all.

None of this made any sense at all.

Sokka didn't like boys. He liked Yue, and Suki, and the pretty girls in Ba Sing Se. But his soulmate was a boy. This boy, watching him with nervous eyes and raised, open palms. Sokka hated that this boy was pretty too, in his own strange way. Maybe it was just because he wasn't mostly bald and screaming at them or lighting things on fire. But no… it was something else too. His face was handsome, the dark hair sweeping his forehead, and actually seeing those little flowers curling their way over his skin made something about him softer too. It was a difference in the eyes as well, no longer hard and flat like coins, everything behind them burned away. They were vivid now, gold and warm.

He stopped a few feet from the edge of Sokka's sword, and they stared at each other for a long, strange moment. Neither spoke, and Sokka, for once, had no idea what in the earth or sky he was supposed to say. 

Zuko stared at him and then glanced over at his own hand, of all things. He reached for it with the other and looked back at Sokka.

"What… what are these ones?" he asked, poking at two tiny flowers on his left thumb. "They appeared at the same time and I always wondered why."

_ That _ was his first question in all of this? That was how this horrible conversation began? With scars on his thumb? No question that they were actually soulmates? Nothing about the fact that they were Water Tribe and Fire Nation? Not that they'd been on opposite sides of a war for as long as they'd know each other? Not that they were both boys? Not that they could never, possibly,  _ ever _ have anything in common between them except the scars and flowers they shouldn't have to share?

"Fish hooks," Sokka answered because what else was he going to do right now? What else possibly  _ was  _ there to say in the face of something like this?

"Two of them?" Zuko asked, his forehead furrowing, and his expression would almost have been funny if Sokka hadn't spent most of the last year hating him. 

"Yeah," he replied. "Dumb mistake."

The silence stretched between them again, and Sokka's arms were starting to shake with the strain of holding his sword aloft. Between them. Keeping the fire prince away.

Zuko hadn't touched his own sword, and there was no fire in his hands this time.

"Are you gonna attack me?" Sokka asked finally.

"No," Zuko replied, and he sounded honest. 

Sokka didn't know how he knew that, how he could somehow pick up the cadence of his voice so easily. He sheathed his sword but kept his distance. 

"What was this one?" Zuko asked after another silent moment, motioning now to a flower on the side of his finger, and something in Sokka's chest ached as he remembered. 

"Kitchen knife," he replied, thinking of his mom's hands, her gentle explanation, her own marks. He'd had such hopes then, a girl somewhere who fit with him like a puzzle piece.

Finally, Sokka looked at his own hand, that first knuckle, that first little flower still sitting there like a reminder, soft and pink and fuzzy. An accident. A bit of chance.

"What was this?" he asked, presenting the knuckle, and Zuko looked down at his own hands. 

He prodded at the old, faded scar and then raised his head again. "I fell out of a tree," he replied, "when I was seven."

Sokka almost laughed, because it was so  _ normal _ , so mundane. This boy had chased them all across the world and cost Sokka too many missed hours of sleep, and now he was here, confessing to falling out of a tree. Like a regular kid. Like he could be anyone. Like they were the same type of person.

"What about this?" Sokka asked, gesturing to one on his elbow, a purple one that curved along with the bone.

Zuko squinted, trying to locate the scar on himself, and then he sighed as he seemed to realize.

"Oh, that was Azula," he said with a hint of a scowl. "She pushed me into a pond and my elbow hit a rock."

Then Sokka did laugh, just a little, and Zuko looked so startled by the sound that it just made him laugh harder.

*

"This one?" 

"Um… bramble bush I think? What about…" 

Sokka seemed to be looking for more flowers on himself, ones they hadn't already discussed while they sat by a wall side by side off to the edge of the training yard. They hadn't said much else, a kind of truce, a fragile sort of agreement that neither would hurt the other until they got this figured out. Whatever "this" was. Whatever Zuko could possibly hope for, whatever strange, small thing he believed he might have.

He refused to question it too intently. 

It had become a loop of conversation, the back and forth, the pieces matching and the stupid, childhood stories. Scattering of nondescript flowers of every color, in every shape and any surface. Surprising similarities, about powerful little sisters and foolish persistence and becoming a warrior too quickly, too young.

It shouldn't have been so easy. They were strangers, had been enemies, yet Zuko sat beside him and asked and answered, looking at the other boy's skin, their echoing marks.

"Oh, this one!" Sokka said, adjusting so his ankle was free and showed off a thin flower just under the bone. "What was this? It happened more recently and I wondered."

Zuko tried to remember, tried not to ruin whatever strange dream this was where his soulmate was  _ here  _ and talking to him and didn't hate him. Or, well, hated him less than he probably had the right to. Hadn’t tried to skewer him on a sword or throw him off the cliff side.

"In Ba Sing Se," he answered, glowering a little and remembered that mean old woman, "a customer whacked me with a door on her way out."

Sokka laughed a little again--he did that a lot, apparently, when he wasn't throwing a boomerang at Zuko's head or making smart remarks--and then turned to him in surprise.

"Wait, a  _ customer _ ?"

"I worked in a tea shop for a while," Zuko confessed, and Sokka's eyebrows rose.

"I thought you were a prince?" he said, the first time either had mentioned their shared history.

How many times had Zuko seen him, the boy with the blue eyes and the painted face, the swept back hair? The boy with the Avatar who seemed to make anything into a weapon, who was clever and loud and sarcastic. The boy with the covered arms, the bare shoulders, the turned down lips. The boy who Zuko had seen as just another frustrating obstacle, another thing keeping him from his honor, his home, his birthright. 

"I'm not anymore," he replied quietly and wasn't sure what else to say. 

Back then, he hadn't understood his distraction with the Water Tribe boy, why he felt more pulled to him than the girl, or sometimes even to the Avatar himself. It hadn't made sense that Zuko oriented his way, tracked him with his eyes, had strange dreams of the boy’s blue-wrapped hands and the smear of paint beneath his eyes. He had pushed it down and away, assumed it was just another sign of what Agni had gotten wrong about him again, like the soulmate men on the ship. It hadn’t made sense enough to dwell on. He'd believed so strongly he had more important things to do. He hadn't wanted to try to understand.

He did now, seeming the splash of red across his face, made beautiful in petals and shadows and color, like an expert painter had carefully crafted each streak, each angle, each blossom. Beautiful like Zuko's actual scar could never be.

Sokka must have seen him looking, because he reached up to touch it, the shape of the flower branded on his face.

Zuko had been right, that his soulmate had been cursed with it too, marked right along with him in his undisguisable guilt.

"What about this one?" Sokka asked finally.

They'd gone through all the others, avoided the most obvious one until now, and yet still Zuko hesitated a moment.

Why? What was there to hide at this point?

He'd found his destiny and his matched set all in the same little party of teenagers, on a temple on a cliffside, in this strange, quiet emptiness. He had left everything else behind. There was nothing left to hide anymore.

He told Sokka all of it. He'd never put the story into words before, but he did now, finding them within himself. The facts--a war meeting, an argument, a threat--but also the feelings: his indignation, his anger, his fear, his regret, his pain. He didn’t know how to feel it all again, but the words came from somewhere anyway, raw and hard like scraping his nails against his skin.

"You were thirteen…" Sokka said quietly when Zuko finally finished. It wasn't a question. He already knew. 

Sokka looked aside at him, met his eyes, their matched marks face to face. 

"You were just a kid," he said, " _ his _ kid, and he… did that to you."

Still not questions, but Zuko acknowledged them with nods anyway. It was still a new realization for him too, but somehow hearing it from Sokka, echoed back to him, it became even clearer. More true.

"Hunting Aang," Sokka continued, voice pitched low, "you were just trying to go home--your only way to go home."

"It was still wrong," Zuko said quietly. "And I'm sorry for all the things I did--attacking your village, and burning Kiyoshi, and stealing Katara's necklace, and--"

"I think that's enough," Sokka said, half smile, half grimace. "I got it."

Zuko ducked his head. "Right. Ok."

They sat in silence a little while longer, nearly shoulder to shoulder. Zuko wondered how long they'd been sitting here, what the others thought of all this, where they were. Weren't they worried? Surprised? But something occurred to him just then, their lack of reaction…

"How long have you known?" he asked finally. "What… we are?"

Sokka didn't meet his eyes and didn't speak right away, his expression hard to read as he looked out across the open space, the stretch of stone and green and still air.

"From the beginning," he answered, subdued and quiet now. "At the village, as soon as you lost your helmet."

Zuko looked down at his hands, the colors there.

"Oh," was all he could think to say in response to that. 

The wind slid in from the chasm below, cool and smelling like earth.

"So… the war paint was to…" Zuko ventured.

"Yeah," Sokka replied, understanding him to an unnerving level already, as if they’d always talked this way, in half sentences and unspoken knowledge. He looked down at his hands too, fidgeted with a bit of thread on his wraps. "I didn't… want it."

The statement stung in some buried place in Zuko's chest. That little, festering hope.

Didn't want him. Of course. He'd been right all along about his soulmate after all. 

"Ok," Zuko replied, pushing it all back down. "That… makes sense. I can go talk to the others. Teach the Avatar firebending. That's why I'm actually here. Why I came. We don’t have to..."

He began to move to stand up, to shift away, to leave. Nothing had changed about his plan, about his destiny. He'd help the Avatar defeat his father and end the war. He'd help bring peace and kindness again. He'd--

A hand closed around his own, keeping him from standing completely and freezing him in place. He looked down in surprise to see Sokka looking up at him, his fingers wrapped around Zuko's palm. His hands were dry, maybe a little rough with weaponry and travel, but comforting to the touch. Zuko knew for a fact his own were warm, making Sokka cool again his skin. A strange, balanced pair.

"Don't--don't go quite yet," Sokka said, looking surprised himself to say it. "Just… sit down again. For a little bit longer."

And Zuko sat, maybe pulled by the spirits, or Agni, or destiny. Maybe just by Sokka. 

"Tell me--um, tell me more about you," Sokka said. "I should… I wanna know more.”

Zuko looked aside at him, confused and unsure.

“Beyond the war, and Aang, and the Fire Nation… all that,” Sokka clarified with a flapping hand gesture, like he could wave all of that away. “Just you, without all the other stuff.”

His hand was still in Zuko's. Neither one had let go, and Zuko didn't know what that meant, what to do with it. He didn't know how to hold hands, let alone with his soulmate, and yet here he was. 

He also didn't know how to answer.

"What…" he tried, "what do you want to know?"

Sokka smiled and, as if trying it out, gave his hand a tentative squeeze. 

Zuko liked it, that little press of fingers and palms, more than any of the kisses he'd shared with those girls. It made something in his uncoil a little, something steady, something calm. He squeezed back, just barely.

"What makes you happy?" Sokka asked.

Zuko looked aside at him and didn't have an answer coming easily. He… had he ever been asked this before? Even thought about it? He'd spent so long after things he was  _ supposed  _ to do or care about or want. But… happiness?

"This," he answered, to his own surprise, and meant all of it at once. 

He meant talking to someone who wanted to listen and who laughed easily.

He meant maybe, possibly, impossibly having a friend.

He meant the cool, open space of the temple yard. 

He meant not being under his father's thumb anymore.

He meant Sokka's hand still holding his. 

Hours later, when it was getting dark, they returned to the fire the others had made in another open area, the rest of the group circled around it as if they'd been waiting. Sokka had kept talking to him until they ran out of words, but it was strange and right. They were… whatever they were, but they could make it work. It didn't change the plan. It didn't have to. 

Zuko had still been holding Sokka's hand as they'd walked back, hadn’t unlinked since Sokka had first initiated. Their hands fit together, palm to palm, olive against brown, red against blue. They walked in silence, just the hands between them, but now as they drew close, those hands dropped apart. He didn't know who moved first. He didn't think it really mattered.

They stopped near the fire, and Sokka cleared his throat.

"So, um, Zuko," he said, "is gonna be Aang's firebending teacher. To help defeat the Fire Lord. He's…" 

Sokka looked around the circle of startled faces, those clearly putting together the scar and the soul-flower, and Zuko held very still. It was obvious, more than soulmates ought to be, having to wear it on both their faces. Had Zuko’s father known that too, what the scar would mean for both of them?

Had he even cared?

It didn’t matter now. All that was far away. Instead, here was this group of children and teenagers, arranged in a semi-circle and lit with orange, their eyes a bit wide, unsure whether to trust or fear. And here was Sokka, still beside him, somehow.

"He's part of the group now," Sokka finished, in a tone that left little room for argument. He glanced back at Zuko and gave him a quick, reassuring nod.

Zuko's heart thumped loud enough in his chest he was surprised Sokka couldn't hear it.

*

There was work to do. There was an Avatar to train, a war to win. That had to take priority over anything else, over any personal feelings.

Sokka at least knew how to put aside personal feelings and be a warrior. He just hoped the others could too. View Zuko with a reasonable wariness but enough acceptance that they could all move forward.

Aang, of course, who would have made friends with the Fire Lord himself if he thought it was possible, welcomed Zuko quickly. Katara threatened to kill him but didn’t out of respect for Aang, and to some degree, Sokka too. Toph didn't care as long as he sometimes let himself get within punching distance. The others were a little baffled but willing to follow everyone else's lead. Sokka… focused on planning and training and the work they had to do. It was strange, fragile, new. Weird. Very weird. 

Sokka didn't know how to be around him, this once enemy, always soulmate, now… whatever he was. Ally? Almost-friend? Something else entirely?

Sometimes looking at him was too hard, like staring into the sun until he had to look away. He wondered if Zuko ever looked back, what he saw, what he might be looking for. What he wanted. 

He'd said something, that first conversation, about how Agni had made him, about a girl in Ba Sing Se and one in the Fire Nation. His face had turned pink and strained and nervous, and Sokka didn't entirely understand what he was getting at but understood enough. He thought. He hoped.

Sokka didn't like boys, not like that. He was mostly sure of that fact.

But Zuko… Zuko watched with those molten sunlight eyes when Sokka talked, laughed in surprise at his jokes, and worked hard beside him without question. Maybe he was trying to make up for all of it before, prove they’d been right to let him join them. Maybe he was just a hard worker anyway. Maybe he just liked Sokka, the way Sokka… well, maybe, sort of didn’t hate him. Zuko wasn’t a little kid like the others. He was snarky too, and smart, and sort of strange, honestly. But somehow it worked with Sokka’s own strangeness, where they ended up communicating in ways that confused the others, in ways that didn’t entirely make sense and made Sokka vaguely nervous.

"Spar with me," Zuko offered at one point, to Sokka's surprise. 

"Sword versus fire seems pretty unfair," Sokka said, cocking a sarcastic eyebrow, "even for a jerkbender."

"Sword versus sword," Zuko replied with a sort of old-Zuko scowl. He patted what turned out to be a twin pair of dao swords at his hip, and the scowl retreated again. "If you, uh, want. If it would be useful, I mean."

It was an odd moment, Zuko looking down at where Sokka was sitting by a fountain, and Sokka looking back up. The wind caught Zuko's dark hair, revealed more of the hesitant expression on his face, the glint in his eyes. Sokka still didn't know what they were now, what they were supposed to be, how any of this was supposed to work.

"Sure," Sokka replied finally, standing up to follow him, and then added with a satisfyingly snarky smile, "if you really think you can handle me and Space Sword." 

Zuko smiled too, slim and sardonic and maybe still a little unsure. 

"We'll see," he said.

They ended up in the same training yard as the first time they'd talked, and Sokka jerked his eyes away as Zuko pulled off his outer robe to reveal his bare arms, corded with muscle and scattered here and there with flowers. One on his right tricep from a scrape Sokka had gotten when he'd fallen into that hole while Aang was learning earth bending. One just along the edge of his forearm from when Sokka had gotten scratched by a spear on a hunting expedition. Sokka's life on someone else's skin. He drew Space Sword and didn't think about it, instead faced Zuko and thought of Master Piandao and his training. Zuko drew his pair of swords in a fluid motion, the silver of them catching the light. 

"Ready to lose?" Sokka teased, hefting his sword higher and taking a strong starting stance.

Zuko's eyebrow twitched in amusement and he settled his weight on his spread feet. Clearly waiting for Sokka to make the first move.

So Sokka did, charging in prepared for a quick disarming and a lot of obnoxious bragging on his part. Zuko parried, stepped aside, quick and agile again. Sokka was strangely reminded of their first meeting, a soldier on a metal plank against a warrior defending his village. He thrust forward again, as if he could push back through time too, could win that very first fight. He knew it wasn't the same now, that the Zuko who deflected and danced and watched him now was different. That they were both different. He swung harder anyway, with something in him he'd halfway forgotten. Once again Zuko retreated, withdrew, redirected.

"You're going  _ easy _ on me?" Sokka realized, voice sharp and scandalized.

Zuko's smile was just this side of smug as he shifted his weight again and shrugged. He didn't appear to have broken a sweat at all, while Sokka could feel it beading at his hairline, on the nape of his neck. He frowned, surprised by the anger that rose in him at that look, at those old memories getting all twisted up with now. At this enemy that had harassed them all around the world and now was here, wearing Sokka's flowers, being someone Sokka couldn't clearly categorize. He moved faster, blow after blow, and managed to get the briefest reaction of surprise from Zuko. So Sokka pressed his advantage, pressing him further and further back until Zuko would be forced to fight for real, to meet him halfway. Sokka didn't know why his teeth ground in his mouth.

The sword rang together, and Zuko moved more quickly now, turned the advantage back. His swords seemed to be everywhere at once all of a sudden and Sokka had to work just to keep them away. His skin prickled. He made a thrust straight forward, a dangerous move for sparring that could skewer his opponent through the chest if it landed. Zuko's blades were there, crisscrossing, catching Sokka's sword and stopping them both dead for a moment. Zuko was sweating now, panting just a little, his eyes bright and his lips parted, and Sokka realized he was too. They remained locked together, close together, mirrors again. Once more just weapons between them.

Like it had always been. Like maybe it would always be. 

Zuko hadn't disarmed him like he could have, so Sokka's logical move was to pull back and reset. Return to the match, be calm and reasonable. Some strange, tumbling anger instead pushed him forward, continuing that skewering thrust. Zuko reacted just a moment too late, caught as he was by surprise. It was a long enough moment for the tip of Sokka's sword to pierce and slide across just the left side of his chest as Zuko rotated away. Long enough for them to stumble apart and for Zuko to give a hiss of pain.

It was that noise, the exhale through the teeth and the gritted expression, that brought Sokka back. What was he doing? What had he  _ done _ ?

Zuko was not the enemy and hadn't been in quite awhile now and never would be again. Those days, those people, they didn't exist anymore.

There was just Zuko,  _ this _ Zuko, holding his chest and wincing with pain.

Sokka dropped his sword and ran, taking Zuko's swords too as soon as he was close enough and tossing them aside. Zuko's hand was on his chest, covering whatever Sokka had done to hurt him, and without thinking, Sokka's hand covered it too, the other finding and clinging to Zuko's shoulder.

"I'm sorry!" he said. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean--that's not what I--"

"It's fine," Zuko said, lifting his hand briefly to check the wound beneath. He replaced it quickly, Sokka's hand going with it. "It's just a cut. It's not that bad."

"But I--I--" Sokka said, and there was something strangled in his throat. 

What would the flower look like if a soulmate did the scarring? 

The thought made him sick, made him squeeze the hand overtop of Zuko's on his chest, and he could swear he could feel Zuko's heartbeat even through his hand. Only then did he realize just how close they were, face to face, hands locked over Zuko's chest, angled near enough that when Sokka looked for Zuko's eyes he could pick out the variations in the shades. Not flat gold. Edges of honey and amber, the color closest to the pupil golden like late afternoon sun reflected on a lake, just as warm and rippling and vibrant. 

Zuko was watching him too, still breathing a little hard. Sokka yanked his eyes away, looked at their hands on Zuko's chest, pressed together. Overlapping, flowers spilling across them both. He must have still been a little winded too, chest tight and heartbeat quick.

"Um, Katara," he volunteered, embarrassed by the squeak in his voice. "She could--she can fix it."

Zuko looked at him again, looked about to speak, and then simply nodded. Sokka let the hand on his chest go, took a step back, and didn't take his other one off Zuko's shoulder as they went in search of the others. His heart was still beating hard, but he stayed at Zuko's side while Katara begrudgingly healed him. Sokka's fingers twitched, always half a breath from reaching to hold his hand. He didn't know why. It didn't make sense.

Zuko was fine. Just a scratch. Not even a scar. No new flowers. But something else had flared to life in Sokka now that he couldn't shake, the memory of those eyes, of their hands and the thud of Zuko's heart, Sokka heart thudding right back.

Sokka was... pretty sure he didn’t like boys.

Boiling Rock helped and hurt his lack of sureness in equal measure. Because there was Zuko, willing to go with him into terrible danger. There was Zuko beside him, his hand on his arm, his breath warm and close in the cold of the cooler. There was Zuko helping, fighting, deferring, offering strange, casual touches that weren't quite friendship and weren't quite something more. There was Zuko, breathing fire and smiling. There was Zuko, side by side in a fight against his own sister, he and Sokka working like a set, more balanced than when they fought against each other, rising and falling together like the tide.

But there was Suki too, her arms around him again and her face pressed to his neck and her sure and steady eyes. There she was, talking him through and helping him plan. There she was, capturing the warden, taking down guards, fighting like she'd been born to it. There she was, at Sokka's back and then against another Fire Nation girl. Suki, who was everything Sokka thought for sure he wanted.

He kept the prison guard helmet on as long as he safely could. The war paint had been too dangerous, too foreign to risk wearing here, but bare skin was too exposed. Especially now, with Suki, with his dad. Was there any way to keep them from knowing, putting the pieces together?

It was ok at the temple, where people knew and didn't mention it. Aang was uncomfortably supportive and Katara had forgiven him for it. But here? Now? How could his dad, could Suki, possibly accept it, keep from hating him? That he was paired with Zuko with his gold eyes, the fire in his blood, the lean line of his body. His soldier's body. His male body.

His dad would be disappointed, Sokka and his traitorous soul-flowers, and Suki wouldn't want him anymore. Yet when his father looked at him as they all clustered onto the airship to escape, he didn't look mad. His eyes met Sokka's even past the helmet, and he had only nodded. Gently smiled. Glanced at Zuko, at Sokka's side like he so often was, and back away. No conversation, at least not yet, and maybe that was easier.

Suki sat beside him in the airship as they flew away, to freedom, back to the others, having finally succeeded at something. His dad was safe. Suki was safe. They'd done it right. But Sokka still kept the helmet pulled over his face to keep it hidden a little longer. To cover that soul-flower as long as he could. Suki was quiet a while and then leaned, body soft and pliant, against his side.

"I've already seen your face, you know," she offered gently. "When I helped you put on the Kiyoshi makeup. And after the Serpent’s Pass. You don’t… you don’t have to hide from me.”

Sokka didn't respond, didn't look at her. 

"I put it together," she continued. "I… already know."

Sokka shook his head, and Suki patted his arm. 

"Do you… like him?" she asked, and it seemed like such a simple question, yet it felt as heavy as a stone in his middle. 

"I like  _ you _ ," he answered finally, turning his face to meet her eyes.

Not a scar in sight. Just a small flower near her ear, bright yellow.

"I like you too," she said, smiling a little, making her round eyes crinkle at the edges. "But do you like  _ him _ ?"

Sokka turned to find the subject of their conversation, leaning tense against the wall on the other side of the room, alone. He was still in the prison clothes, which revealed more flowers, all Sokka's little injuries and memories and moments. They were sprinkled across his pale skin, a strange garden of someone else's life. He looked tired, and thin, and lonely. Lonely in a way Sokka felt sometimes, as if Zuko had lived in it forever, worn that separateness on him like another set of clothing. Zuko raised his head for just a moment and met Sokka's eyes, just that flash of gold that made him think of a training yard, of his heart suddenly afraid to lose this thing he didn't even think he wanted.

"Yes," Sokka whispered, and Suki held his hand. 

Sokka didn't know if he liked boys. But he liked Zuko. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're continuing to enjoy! Thanks to anyone reading, kudosing, commenting, etc. You're all great :) Feel free to hop over to my tumblr if you want to chat more at all! onmyliteraturebullshitagain
> 
> Also, I think I may break this story up by dropping my next Midwest Zukka next. Idk, it's the ADHD guys and I just want variety and can't focus on just one thing at a time. :)


	3. Chapter 3

Zuko felt better when Sokka was around, and by the time they were at his old family home on Ember Island, he'd given up trying to decide if it was because they were soulmates or just because it was Sokka. Maybe it didn't matter either way because he liked him, regardless. 

He liked sparring with him even with that bit of risk still attached ("Swordbending!" Sokka called it with too much enthusiasm, although he'd been more careful ever since that first time), and he liked going on hunts and food runs with him, and he liked when they talked and griped about sisters and kids and work to do, and he even liked when Sokka called him "jerkbender" because it was said like an inside joke, the way friends teased each other. 

And they  _ were _ friends. And maybe that was fine. Enough. It was more than Zuko had hoped for, a soulmate who didn't hate him for ruining his face and being the banished prince, and then later didn't hate him for being Fire Nation, for being connected to a war that seemed like it would never end. He had a friend now--multiple friends, amazingly, although Sokka mattered the most. Mattered… too much to him. Mattered like a weird sick-feeling under the base of his sternum that wasn't quite excitement and wasn't quite fear. 

And Sokka had Suki, who was pretty and strong and kind, who liked him back in the same way. Who had no scar and no fire and no unsure boy's hands.

They were happy. They were a chosen pair, like those in Ba Sing Se, and Zuko wanted (so hard, so much, so desperately) to be happy for them.

They were good together. They'd found each other without Agni's intervention. But that didn't stop Zuko from having to look away when Sokka kissed her cheek on the beach, so comfortable and friendly and close. When they leaned into each other’s sides. When they laughed together. Suki clearly didn't mind the flower on Sokka's face, watching him with a smile, and Zuko forced down and down and down this thing that felt like jealousy inside him.

Sokka was his friend. That was good. That was something. He should be happy with even that much.

They all went to a very bad play by very bad actors (Zuko had warned them, after all), and he could almost have laughed at the terrible scene of fake-him and fake-Katara. They were friends too, now, but nothing else. Neither wanted anything else.

The play had picked the wrong Water Tribe sibling, and Zuko could have found it funny if it all didn't make his insides hurt.

At least everyone seemed equally unhappy as they trudged back to the house that night, somber and quieted by the play's ending. Defeat. Destruction. A crowd cheering as Ozai prevailed. 

It was dark and cool and the moon was bright, and Zuko let the others go in while he stood a while on the beach alone under the heavy darkness of the sky. The air smelled like salt, like his days at sea, and something about it made him lonely and calm at the same time. He looked up at the constellations, remembered being annoyed at learning them, being impatient and rude with everyone because he was a  _ prince _ and didn't need this. It chafed him to remember, but he liked that he could still pick out the symbols and stories in the sky: the maiden, the sword, the crown. He didn't mean to, but he thought of the quartermaster and the sailor as he stood there, the ocean wind kicking back his hair. What had happened to them, once Zuko and the ship were gone?

He hoped they were happy. He hoped they were together. 

He took another slow inhale and listened to the sea itself breathe in and out, trying for a moment to forget the comet coming far too soon, forget that his uncle was still lost to him, forget that he was helping send a kid to fight his father. Just a kid, against the most powerful man in the world, against a war too big for all their lifetimes even stacked up together.

What happened if they lost?

"Hey," said a voice behind him, and he turned a little, "you ok?"

Sokka, as blue and grey as the waves, lit up by the same silver-white of the moon. Zuko nodded but didn't answer as the other boy filled the empty space on his right side.

"Are you coming in?" Sokka asked after a moment of quiet between them.

"In a little while, I think," Zuko replied.

When he looked over, all he saw was flower, the sweeping reds that washed over Sokka's features, out of place. Wrong and Zuko's fault, another thing he couldn't fix.

"It was… a bad play," Sokka offered, and Zuko hoped he understood the implication right.

That won't be our ending. That won't be our fate. The glance from Sokka's direction seemed to confirm it.

"Yeah. I… yeah. Just a bad play," Zuko replied, watching him a little from the corner of his eye, unable to look away, orienting after him like a sunflower always turned toward Agni. 

Without comment, Sokka reached out and found his hand. Their fingers slid together without hesitation, fitting open space to each digit, the brush of skin. Zuko looked down at their hands a moment, together once more but different than the first time. Knitted now, instead of just linked. Entangled more completely.

His throat was tight. Sokka stared straight ahead at the ocean. Their hands remained together, something that wasn't just two boys who'd become allies, been forced together by the spirits and by a war.

"What about Suki?" Zuko finally asked in a too-small voice.

"She's my friend," Sokka said immediately, still looking out, just a profile and that flower, just the strands of hair caught by the wind. 

"And… what am I?" Zuko asked, afraid to feel that hand pull out of his, leave him empty, grasping just for salt-touched air. Afraid as well to hear a repeat, find out for sure where he'd been placed on the hierarchy of Sokka's affections.

The hand remained, cool and sure, fitted together with his.

Finally Sokka looked over at him, and his eyes were as dark and pure as precious stones.

"You're my soulmate," he replied, like that word was not a thing that they'd avoided, a pitfall they'd tip-toed around. They could talk of scars and flowers, but to say the word itself…

"Ok," Zuko said back, because he didn't have any other words, and he squeezed the hand still folded up with his.

*

They all had to separate, try to do something even with Aang missing, with the world more question mark than clarity. There were fights still to be had, and the White Lotus camp bustled, abuzz with work yet to do. 

Sokka and Suki and Toph would go after the airships. Zuko and Katara would go after Azula. They would hopefully, when the day was won, return all to each other. But there was no guarantee.

There was just a day and a comet and a war and the too-large weight of the world upon them.

And there was a boy with flowers on his hands and a scar on his face, once again stepping away (like the temple, the airship, the beach) to be alone. To keep being alone.

How was it Sokka had become the pursuer?

He found him out in the trees, a cluster of woods on the outskirts of the camp, the ground light dappled and shadowed in equal measure from the shifting leaves overhead. Zuko was pacing quickly back and forth and looking strained and angry and afraid. Sokka had learned that Zuko didn't like to look afraid in front of others, a sentiment Sokka too-well understood. He recognized the cover, the anger instead, the distance, the put away emotions. But Zuko looked up now, toward Sokka, and the fear stayed on his face. The honesty of his expression made Sokka glad to have followed, to not have planned ahead and simply went.

He'd let that spirit-pull drag him along again, no longer so unwelcome. 

"We… um, have to go soon," he said.

Zuko nodded, just once. "I know."

It was different than he'd felt before, Sokka noted dimly, a different sort of twist inside his gut. But he supposed what Zuko was to him was different too. 

"You're not wearing your war paint," Zuko pointed out.

Sokka swallowed. He hadn't worn it now in a long time. "No, I'm not," he agreed.

Zuko watched him. "But we're…" 

_ Going to war _ , he didn't say, but it hung in the air between them anyway. 

He gestured once, unsure, between them. "If you don't wear it, people might know…" 

_ What we are to each other _ , remained unsaid as well.

"I…" Sokka said, his chest a little tight, "I don't want to cover it up anymore."

_ Cover you up _ , he hoped came through. That he didn't care about hiding what Zuko was to him, not now, not when the future was a haze of uncertain orange and too big and far away.

Zuko watched him, still a few paces apart, still that open, forest floor between them.

Sokka reached out, and Zuko met him in the middle, hand to hand. They'd continued to do this sometimes, because it felt right, because sometimes they both wanted a little comfort, a little support, a little of something else. Just hand holding. Just a brush of fingers. Just a quick squeeze or a lingering link as they sat together. Never by the others, but alone together, they'd each gotten comfortable reaching out for a hand to hold. Beginning to trust that it would be waiting. 

Sokka looked down at their hands, reunited again, the scars and soul-flowers scattered across their skin. 

"Don't--" he said, and his voice cracked a little as he stroked the very old scar on Zuko's knuckle, "don't get any more of these." He looked up to meet his eyes. "I've got enough flowers already."

Zuko's smile was weak and small, an attempt that didn't quite succeed.

"I'll try my best," he said, and Sokka nodded, heart a tangly mess inside his chest. Something a little like the worry after Sokka had cut him, a little like the lurch when he'd looked at him on the airship, a little like how it always felt to hold his hand.

Before he lost all his nerve, he brought one of Zuko's hands to his lips and kissed the small old flower from the kitchen knife. Zuko's skin was warm like it always was, warm without feeling like a fever, warm like standing under a clear summer sky. That heat and press with his lips made the heart-tangle worse, and Zuko had made a strange, startled noise as he did it. But he hadn't pulled away, so Sokka tried again: the two flowers on Zuko's thumb, a scar on the back of his hand, a flower on the side of his wrist.

Zuko was holding very still, maybe not breathing, so Sokka stopped and met his eyes again. At his face, Zuko squeezed their joined hands, another gesture grown familiar. I'm here. I'm with you. I get it. Then he took Sokka's own hand to his lips and kissed the little flower on that knuckle, the scar on the side of his finger. He stepped a little closer, and Sokka didn't step back, although his eyes were reminding Sokka of the sun again, of a brilliance that made him want to look away.

He didn't.

They had to go soon. They were running out of time. Yet still Sokka couldn't get himself to leave.

Zuko swallowed hard and cleared his throat and squeezed his hands again.

"I know you might not feel the same way about me," he said, almost too formal, too distant, "but thank you, these last few weeks, for being my friend."

Sokka's chest was getting more tangled by the second, each time he took a breath.

"What way do you feel about me?" he asked, too quiet, too afraid of the answer.

Zuko heard anyway. 

"I…" Zuko began and looked down at their joined hands. "I don't want to ruin this."

"You can't," Sokka said and realized he meant it. 

"Then…" Zuko said slowly, still looking at their hands, "then I should tell you. Just… in case."

"We're all coming back," Sokka said, more from a place of stubbornness than optimism.

"Still, I…" Zuko continued, eyes bright, "I think I love you."

There was a heart-thump of quiet between them.

"Oh," Sokka said, which was a terrible, nothing answer, but he was still learning how to have a soulmate, how to have one like Zuko. He looked at their joined hands also, looked at how they fit together. 

"I think I love you too," he replied softly, because he didn't know how to be in love either, but he was learning a lot of new things this year and didn't want to stop. 

"Ok," Zuko said after a moment, voice small, and finally they both looked up and met each other's eyes. 

"That's… good then," Sokka offered. "Same page."

Zuko's smile was fragile. "Same… yeah." He took a quick breath and then said, quiet and unexpected, "I… uh, I haven't kissed a boy before."

Sokka smiled a little more, cheeks warm, stomach worse with nerves. "Well… me either."

Zuko took a breath. "I want to kiss you," he said, a little too fast. "I want to kiss you goodbye just in case."

"Not goodbye," Sokka said immediately. "Just… just a kiss. Just that you want to kiss me. Because--because--"

"Because," Zuko agreed, another quick nod, and something eased in Sokka's chest. "So can I?"

"Can you?"

"Yeah."

"You mean, kiss me?"

"Yes, kiss you." Zuko got a bit of that old, scowly look in his face, even with the pink creeping up his neck. "What else have we been talking about?" And somehow that was better.

Because that old, scowly Zuko was persistent, had chased them all around the world, kept fighting and falling and kept coming back somehow. Always came back. 

Sokka leaned forward and kissed him instead, and it wasn't so different from kissing a girl except that it meant more. A lot more. Things Sokka didn't quite have words for, didn't quite know how to hold inside himself. And Zuko kissed him back, and their hand squeezed, and it felt a bit like all the flowers on his body were going into full bloom all at once. 

*

Now that they'd been together, moving further and further away from his soulmate felt like stretching out his arms and fingers as far as he possibly could and still finding what he needed out of reach. It ached, the more space that extended between them, but he couldn't think about that now. He couldn't think about that it might be the last time, that he didn't know what he was going toward at his old home.

He just knew that there'd be more than ghosts there waiting.

But whatever happened, he had that kiss, that moment under the trees when things finally all fit together. No matter what happened after, that couldn't be taken away from him. That Sokka had leaned forward and brought their lips together, so sure and warm, and Zuko had felt in that instant more like himself than he'd ever imagined possible. Like he was aware of every bit of air in his lungs, every drop of blood in his veins, every bit of fire that Agni had breathed into his soul. 

For a moment, he didn't feel like he'd been made wrong, born unlucky. 

He didn't know what it meant. He'd never truly believed he'd get this far. But it was his anyway.

They kept flying, he and Katara, further and further away from the others, toward the end of the world. 

The comet. The fire inside him suddenly a typhoon, as big as the sky, and Azula, somehow even bigger. He had come this far. He'd learned so much. He thought about dragons and sun warriors and put-aside vengeance, about his uncle and his friends and his new-new life. He thought of Sokka and the flower on his face, the flowers on his hands, eyes like an ocean and a heart that maybe loved him too.

He let himself burn.

He fought his last Agni Kai, back somehow, to the beginning of everything again. Back to what had marked both him and Sokka long ago.

He truly hadn't meant to mark them both again. 

But here he was, shaking with the crackle of a storm inside him, his chest sparking, and the fight was raging on without him now. Something roared in his ears, and his heart was beating too hard, out of sink, in a way that made him dizzy. He tried to breathe, curled as he was into himself, and he looked to that very first soul-flower, that tiny, fragile symbol there on the side of his finger, and tried to bleed the lightning from his skin. His chest burned, too familiar and so different from the burn on his face. He tried to hold himself together, a thumb brushed across that flower as if it was Sokka himself, his hand beside him at the temple, by the sea, in the woods. 

He was still alive. Azula was defeated. Katara was back, healing him, trying to heal him. The tingle of water soothed more of the ache and turned the wound, far faster, into another scar. Another large one. Another one from his family. 

But this one… he had to believe that it was not a mark of shame.

"Your brother," Zuko murmured as Katara finished, and she looked at him in surprise. He gestured to the new scar, wondering just how it might blossom on the other's skin and tried for a somewhat wincing smile. "He didn't want another flower."

Katara's laugh was strange and tearful. 

"He'll be ok with a flower," she said, still holding water to Zuko's wound, "as long as it doesn't turn grey." She lay her hand on Zuko's chest. "You can't let it turn grey."

*

They were alive, even if Sokka’s leg was maybe broken and his shoulder felt a little out of place. Toph hadn’t fallen, and Suki had come back, and Aang had won. The Fire Lord, the most powerful man in the world, was small and on the ground, alive and unable to burn them. Finally made to understand that he was just a bully, to have to know what it felt like, in the end, to be weak and alone.

Sokka was not alone, but he kept on checking the flowers he could see regardless, just to make sure.

Suki saw him do this and touched his arm.

“He’s still ok,” she said, tapping a little flower on the back of his hand, a tiny, purple blossom from something minor and long ago. “They’ll be ok.”

He nodded, tried to believe her, wanted to believe her.

Then later, after, when things seemed like they’d calmed down, he’d undressed and seen it. Enormous and new. In the middle of his chest. Vivid like the one on his face. He’d splayed a hand across it, feeling the panic that immediately burst to life right beneath that hand, right beneath that flower. 

Zuko. His soulmate. His Zuko.

He was hurt.

He barely thought before he pulled his clothes back on and ran (as best he could on his leg, with a crutch). Ran, because that was Zuko, who had moved so strangely from threat to friend to something else. To that not-goodbye kiss under the trees and that 'maybe love if they could just survive this' feeling. He'd survived. Zuko had to survive too. They deserved their chance when the world wasn't teetering on a knife's edge all around them.

“We have to go,” he said to Aang and Suki and Toph sitting around a fire, his hand still pressed flat to his chest like that would protect Zuko, like Zuko would somehow feel his hand even from a world away.

Feel his hand like he had against a stone wall, beside a quiet sea, so many, many times after that had led up to that kiss that had turned Sokka’s heart inside out. That had created something so strange and true and impossible to deny that he could taste it in the back of his mouth, smell it like a fresh blossom on the air.

“We have to go,” he said again. “We have to go to Zuko.”

And once again, no one argued when it came to the two of them.

*

Zuko worried, later when he'd been set up in a room in the healer's quarters of the palace, still weak and sick and wrong. The world kept turning without him. Somehow kept turning. He still didn't know about the rest of them, if they'd succeeded, if it was truly done, but at least so far, the world hadn't ended. He let himself wash in and out of sleep, still feeling the crackle of Azula's lightning in him sometimes, the shiver of Katara’s water. Feeling the weight of what was still to come. 

But there were flowers and they were still bright. He checked each time he opened his eyes just to be sure.

His soulmate was out there somewhere, beautiful and strong and alive. Maybe, maybe, wanting him too. 

He awoke days later to commotion, thuds and shouts in the hall, and sat up abruptly, pulling fire into his hands. It hurt and made him a little dizzy, but if they'd lost, if there was danger, if the war was still unwon even though the hawks had brought in letters saying it was ok now, he had to…

But then he heard the rise of a familiar voice, stubborn and demanding, and he relaxed again. The commotion continued, but good luck to any guard who thought they could stand in the way of a determined Sokka.

The door burst open, proving Zuko's point, and there was Sokka himself, leaning on a crutch and holding his other hand flat to the middle of his chest. Behind him, guards and servants were still talking and arguing and yelling at him, but he hobbled further in and slammed the door behind him, shutting them all out. 

It was just the two of them again, just a pair of strangely matched souls.

Sokka's eyes were very bright. His leg was wrapped in bandages. He looked wild and strained and other emotions Zuko didn't know how to explain. 

And then he was across the room far faster than the injuries would have led Zuko to believe, all persistence as he tossed the crutch aside. A moment later, his arms were around Zuko and his weight was crashing them both backward into the bed together in a pile that seemed to be mostly elbows and knees.

"Ow," Zuko protested at the pressure on his chest but didn't dare let go of the grip he had around the boy halfway on top of him.

Sokka seemed similarly unconcerned as he clung on, bodies squashed up uncomfortably together on the bed, a snarl of limbs and bandages and hands and flowers.

"I said," he whispered into the side of Zuko's head where his face was pressed, "no more flowers."

"I know," Zuko said, holding him back and smelling his scent of sweat and sea. "I tried, but I figured your sister not being cooked by mine was more important."

Sokka squeezed him tighter for just a moment.

"Jerkbender," he muttered, and it sounded affectionate again when said into his hair, said while arms were still around him. 

"Peasant," Zuko said fondly, hanging on, and Sokka snorted a laugh against him.

"Right, I guess you're Fire Lord now," he said.

"Not yet," Zuko said. "Not quite."

They continued to hug, awkward and on top of each other, in the quiet of the room, both seemingly unwilling to let go now that they were back together. What it meant, what they'd possibly say if someone walked in and saw this strange display, Zuko truly didn't know. He also didn't care at all.

"What happens when you are?" Sokka asked, again like he could read Zuko's mind.

Zuko had wondered the same thing. What happened to him? What happened to the world? What happened to the future?

What happened to them?

"I don't know," he admitted, and the movement he made against Sokka's neck was not a nuzzle. But it was close enough.

Sokka finally drew back, although he didn't entirely stop touching him, and he didn't get off the bed. They moved to sitting instead, and Zuko continued to reach out too, a hand on an arm and on a knee, wanting him that close again, after the separation. 

Spirits, how much would it hurt when Sokka returned to the South Pole, to have full oceans and islands keeping them apart? Did Zuko just go too? Did he ask for Sokka to stay? Did he find a way to hold him against his chest forever just to ease the ache?

He didn't think about that now. For the moment, they were both here.

"So what happened?" he asked, because Sokka would tell a good story, loud and dramatic, and that would make it easier to not think. To just enjoy him, here and whole.

He was right, and he listened to Sokka's daring exploits, his story like a badger-mole tunnel that looped around and doubled back and overlapped. The war balloons. Toph and Suki. Lights in the sky. A broken leg. Space sword. Aang. An ending.

Zuko hoped he never stopped talking. 

"And I thought everything was ok then, with Aang and the Fire Lord and the armies," Sokka said, "until I saw… this."

He rested his hand on the middle of his chest. Zuko had almost forgotten, caught up in the joy of reunion, of success, of Sokka’s voice. Of course he remembered now.

"Can I… see it?" he asked, strangely nervous.

Sokka stared at him a moment, tightened his jaw, and nodded. He undid the wrap of his tunic carefully, exposing skin until suddenly, there it was, a new soul-flower in the middle of his chest, a match to the exploded star-shape on Zuko's own, right now still wrapped in bandages.

It was blue. Like Azula's fire. Like Sokka's eyes. Like the sky and the sea. It was open like a flower craving the sun, layers of petals and details and edges stretched out with yearning, with strength. Brilliant and alive like the one on his face.

"I'm sorry," Zuko said around a lump in his throat.

Sokka reached out and held his hand again.

"I'm not," he replied, "because we're both ok."

Then the joined hands were moving, Sokka shifting Zuko's grip until the tips of his fingers rested against Sokka's skin, rested against that new flower on his sternum. He could feel as Sokka's chest moved with his breath, but Zuko couldn't breathe. Couldn't see or think beyond his fingertips on that soul-flower, on Sokka.

On his soulmate.

"See?" Sokka said, and his voice shook a little. "Both… we're both ok."

Zuko may have managed a nod, but he wasn't sure.

"You--" he began, voice raspy and desperate, like the words didn't want to come, "you know that thing I said? Before we left?"

Sokka nodded, eyes locked still on his, their hands still together, still on his chest. 

"I still do," Zuko said, breath hitching again. "I… I know I do."

"You do?"

"Yeah."

"You mean…" Sokka said, and he swallowed hard before he finished, "you love me?"

"Yes," Zuko said softly, watching him. "I love you."

"Ok," Sokka replied and then smiled. "That's good."

"It is?"

"Yeah, because I love you too."

Zuko stared at him, feeling those words hit him like an entirely different type of lightning. There was no duress, no "maybe we'll both die - I better say it." Just them, in this empty room, with a world still alive and a future coming into clearer view. 

"Are you sure?" he asked quietly. "Because you don't… have to, just because of the flowers. You can--you should--"

"You're not Fire Lord yet," Sokka cut in, smiling again. "You don't get to boss me around."

Zuko gaped at him. "I'm not  _ bossing you around. _ "

"Then let me love who I want to, jerk," Sokka said, "because I wanna love  _ you _ , soulmate or not."

Want to. Wanting Zuko. Choosing him, regardless. 

"I wanna kiss you again," Zuko said quickly, before he woke up from this impossible dream (or found out he really had died and this was the spirit world). "I wanna kiss you more, and cuddle you in this bed with me, and not stop touching you for four days."

Sokka actually laughed. "Four days is a lot."

"Three days?"

"Deal," Sokka replied, "if food is also involved."

"I'm almost the Fire Lord," Zuko said with a snort. "I can get us food."

"Then great," Sokka said back, and Zuko had the brief awareness that their hands were still piled up, still touching Sokka's bare chest, that they were both alive and together. That, impossibly, amazingly, they were here and in love and their lives were continuing forward, shiny and new. 

They shifted around so they could lay down, facing each other, a pair of parentheses in the narrow bed. Sokka tucked his legs against Zuko's ("So warm," he said. "Why didn't I take advantage of this sooner?" and Zuko just laughed and pressed their legs in nearer) and Zuko kept their hands knitted up together between them. Sokka shifted just a little closer, enough to ever so gently rest their foreheads one against the other. 

"What… what happens now?" he asked softly.

"I don't know," Zuko said, the answer the same whether he meant  _ now _ as the next few minutes or the next few years. "But we're… we're a pair, right? Agni made us that way."

"Tui and La," Sokka argued, "but go on."

"Whichever spirits," Zuko said with an eye roll. "We're… we’re meant to be together, apparently." He reached up a finger and gently traced the lower edge of the flower on Sokka's face. "Laws or conventions or whatever, who could--who's gonna argue with the spirits?"

"Good point," Sokka replied, smiling again. "Maybe Aang."

"But Aang doesn't… mind us," Zuko said, and then, suddenly concerned, added, "Right?"

"Right," Sokka agreed. "I'm pretty sure we've got his full support."

"So we'll--we can make it work," Zuko said, more confident than he really felt. 

Because there were laws, and there were the boundaries of nations, and there was a world on the cusp of change.

"We stopped a war," Sokka agreed, with similar confidence. "I'm pretty sure we can figure out how to date."

Zuko drew back a little. "Wait, you wanna  _ date me _ ?"

"I said I  _ loved  _ you," Sokka said, laughing again, "but  _ dating's  _ what surprises you?"

"Huh," Zuko said, considering, and then met Sokka's eyes again. "I also, uh, still wanna kiss you. Because, um, because--"

"Because," Sokka agreed, eyes bright and clear. 

Zuko touched Sokka's cheek, bent his face, and kissed him, and this time it was even better, because there was no finite cut-off, no chance that one or both would not return. There was only soft lips and soft breath and soft hands, just another body there beside him, warm and real. Just the way Zuko could feel Sokka against his face, could feel the way their bodies echoed on and on and on like mirrors faced together. Sokka, who drew back a moment with his beautiful eyes, one surrounded in red. Just his hand reaching out to hold Zuko’s face, drawing him back in to kiss him again. And again. And again.

Wanting Zuko, and Zuko wanting him, scars and flowers and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who read this story! I hope you enjoyed, and I truly appreciate ever kudos and comment :)


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